Bondage in the Murder House
by thursdaysisters
Summary: Rated for slash, dubcon, bondage, and whipping. Serial Killer!Jensen/Journalist!Jared. Working on a missing persons case, Jared unwittingly attracts the attention of Jensen, an evil fairy king posing as a librarian, who kidnaps him as a sex slave. Written for chomaisky.
1. Chapter 1

Jared had just come home with the groceries, when he slipped and caught his sleeve on a coat hook. A bullet shell rolled across the floor. He stood there for a moment, listening, and when his grandmother coughed in the next room he breathed out and examined his sleeve, where a long tear ran from his elbow to the button hole. It was his only work coat. How would he pay for it?

He bent down to examine the shell. A Greek immigrant from Long Island, his grandmother saw axe murderers behind every lamp post, and, besides keeping all the lights on at night, was in the habit of borrowing a gun from the neighbor and then forgetting where she put it. A box of .38 rounds spilled out from where a mouse had chewed the lid. He would have to sweep them later, the ice cream was melting.

She sat in her wheelchair, her nazarlik necklace, a blue iris meant to shield her from evil, glittering in the light of the kitchen TV.

(Note: If you are reading this aloud, put the stress on the second syllable of nazarlik, as if you have been correcting white people's pronunciation all your life.)

"Did you hear about that shooter up in Montreal? They're still lookin' for the guy. Five thousand dollars if you know anything."

The gun had to be somewhere in the kitchen, possibly the bedroom, but he'd have to wait until she was asleep for that. He moved cans around the pantry, eyeing the mail next to her spotted hand. The corner of a hand-written return address peaked out from the bills. "You shouldn't watch the news."

Her voice rose a little, upset that he wasn't upset. "He killed an old woman for her social security check. He thought she had a lot of money. But she didn't have any friends, so they might not have found her at all if the power company hadn't had an appointment with her."

"The nearest house is three miles, you're more likely to die hitting your head in the shower."

She cleared her throat. "The girls are coming soon, it's my turn to host bridge."

He stared at the bottom of the paper bag. The letters he'd exchanged over the last year had been full of interesting insight, at least from his penpal's side, whereas all Jared could offer was small town desperation and occasional progress on a missing person's case. When had he last eaten something other than popcorn? He'd have to get a second job. "Okay, well, I'm gonna walk to the office."

She twisted around in her chair. "Oh please take the car, there's crazy people out there."

He was about to make some joke about her bridge partners, when he opened the silverware drawer and found the gun. He smiled. And here he thought he'd have nothing to write back about. "Yeah, you're right," he said, stuffing it in his waistband beneath his jacket, "I'll be back for dinner, say hi to everyone for me."

"Take my winter coat," she said, eyeing his torn sleeve, "You're dressed like a peasant."

Seeing as he was early, Jared stopped at the library, his back to the clerk as she typed in his requests. Exhaust plumed out the back of his car. He didn't like to leave it running, but his alternator had been on the fritz all week, and home was eight miles in the snow if the engine didn't turn. He almost pulled out the letter, but didn't.

(Note: If you are reading this aloud, say the name of the person you miss most but know you will never meet in person. Make up any name you like.)

She picked up the phone. "We moved all the maps upstairs, I'll call and have them brought down."

He stuffed his hands in his coat pockets, then remembered his keys were still in the ignition. "I'm kind of in a hurry."

She held up a finger, nodding at the voice on the other end of the line, then replaced it in cradle. "You can go on up. He's with another client right now, but the media center's unlocked."

He checked his watch. The story had to be in by five if it were going to make the evening paper, and it would be thin enough without the landowner records. Unsolved cases always made the front page. He took the stairs two at a time, pausing only to glance out the window, the trees unfreezing and transforming into car thieves the moment he looked away.

Budget cuts meant that city hall had merged with the local library to save on space, so the second floor was a box maze of green file cabinets waiting to be claimed. He waved at two shadows in the distance, and the tallest made a go-ahead motion toward the viewing room. Running his fingers over microfiche labeled by zip code, Jared found the one he needed and sank into a plastic chair.

Several people had gone missing over time, mostly drifters, and the police had discarded the usual conspiracy theories of domestic terrorist cells. Sometimes he lay in bed, wondering if this whole case was a joke, if none of the murders were connected, and he was seeing patterns like a kid spotting elephants in the clouds.

The client was a short woman, and Jared watched the V of the assistant's back as he stretched for the top shelf to get her something. He touched the letter inside his coat, then pulled his hand away. Normally he'd relish this privacy, the consequence of a relative who regularly searched his room for pornography, but he didn't want to rush it. Opening a notepad, he began scanning for the addresses in the police report.

"Finding everything you need?"

Jared was about to say yes, when he saw the man's reflection in the computer screen and turned around. "Yeah, just...checking something."

(Note: If you are reading this aloud, say the last line quietly as if you have revealed a secret.)

The assistant nodded. He had square white teeth and steel-rimmed glasses, so that his face shone when he smiled, and Jared could not help but feel a kinship when he noticed the stain on his collar. Second-hand, it had to be. "Are you working on a paper?"

Jared had rehearsed this in the mirror. "Some developers are interested in storefront property on the county line, wanted to check the maps before I go out and take pictures."

But Jared had only to look at the screen for a second to realize how fake that sounded. The murder site in question was hemmed in on both sides by train tracks, the nearest utility road snaking two miles east and the paved roads laying further still. Even coyotes didn't venture that far out.

"Well then I'll leave you to work," said the assistant, "I just wanted to say, well, I stand behind you."

He pointed to the woollen collar of Jared's coat. Grandmother's coat. Grandmother's ubiquitous nazarlik pinned to the coat. The man tapped it three times, as though it were an old friend.

"More folks ought to take pride in their convictions."

Jared smiled. You couldn't not smile at such a handsome face, especially in a small town when one man's good luck charm might be mistaken for another's banner of racial purity. Did the assistant harbor knowledge of an underground society? Were they brothers in some secret order that might point to a detail Jared had overlooked in his case? Or maybe the man's family was Greek too, either way.

"Thanks," said Jared, holding out his hand, "Name's Jared."

"Jensen," said the young man, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose, "I get off around eight, doing anything tonight?"

Jared remembered his car, and frantically thought of any places that sold coffee near his house. "There's a gas station near the Taylor farm, I know the cook if you're hungry. Eight thirty?"

Jensen pressed a warm hand on Jared's, bright green eyes fixing him in his seat. "I'll be there."

Work is a church basement with three desks and a hand-cranked apparatus for folding the newspapers, a stack of music programs in the corner for next week's Christmas show. Sales were same as last year, though more pages were devoted to car ads. His co-worker Daryl watched a video, wrapped in a green sleeping bag with one skinny arm extended on the keyboard, like an addict who'd tried pupating into a journalist but stopped halfway.

"Hey J, check this out, I got a beheading."

Jared looked away, then looked up. The hotel room in the video could have anywhere. A man in black was bent down out of frame, right shoulder pumping. How long did it take to cut off someone's head?

Daryl sipped his coffee. "I got friends in the Bay area working for a search engine, all they do is delete crap like this. I got eight more, you wanna see them?"

"The boss know you're using his computer?"

"Hell, this ain't for print, Channel 2 asked me to send a few clips for the eleven o'clock slot."

Jared laid out the maps he'd copied from the library, locations circled and numbered with sticky labels, a rusty paperclip beside his name. The video zoomed in, so that the killer's eyes filled the screen. In a few hours he'd come home to find his grandmother weeping at the bad man on the TV, wrinkled face pressed against his chest asking him to sell the house and move back east, and he didn't know if he could do that.

"You can't show that kinda thing on TV."

Daryl leered at him. "You know how much they're paying me? You know how much they're gonna pay as soon as I get more footage?"

Jared walked to his car in the dark, propping open the hood with a length of pipe to check the antifreeze. His mind was a twig in the wind, not settling on anything. Once the car warmed up, he switched on the cab light and pulled out the letter, careful not to tear the return address.

"Dear J,

It's snowing where you are. I can smell it. My thumb is behind your ear. It takes me eight seconds to trace the line of your jaw. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. I do this over and over until I have you memorized. You are walking down the main drag, to the first blank wall where no one is parked. Draw some flowers. They can be any kind. If it gets too dark, I will draw them for you."

They were full of little puzzles like this, less a love letter and more as if his penpal were casting him in a movie. Should he mention his meeting with Jensen? Digging under the seat for a can of spray paint, he did as he was told and ventured into the night air.

The wind had picked up, and people only stepped outside long enough to hurry into the next building. He slid past dumpsters, where a bartender was pulvarizing wood pallets with a sledgehammer, though to Jared it was breaking down his grandmother's door, and he was hurrying to the kitchen.

(Note: If you are reading this aloud, tuck a gun into your jacket and then pretend everyone in the room has one too. They will. I've checked.)

The flowers looked more like shamrocks when he stepped back, so he circled over the centers and added two triangles for leaves. It was dumb, but if his friend liked it, who was he to ask questions? The letters were intimate, educated, with a weight of refinement that Jared's upbringing had not prepared him for. Wasn't that what everyone fantasized about, to be wanted by a lordly stranger?

He thought of Jensen, and turned to squint into the shadows, as if he might be hiding behind a mailbox. There was no one there, and even the bartender had left the remaining pallets for the morning shift. Jared wiped paint off his thumb on the bricks and headed back to the car.

Jared watched fish dart beneath the lake and thought about John Doe, or Captain One Eye as the coroner had joked. According to the report, a drifter was found a half mile from shore, frozen, his left eye dangling from its' socket and nails broken like he'd been digging into the ice in order to get away from whatever was chasing him. No other wounds, no signs of a struggle, no idea why he'd be traveling so far from the road.

But Jared couldn't put that in a letter. It was just another sound bite, dead of exposure with one eye dried to the side of his cheek like a unpicked raisin, another obituary for him to linger over and wonder if Captain One Eye had been his pen pal. If any of them had been his friend.

Back in the car, sunset turned the snow red and he put the finishing touches on a pencil sketch he'd thought of after painting those flowers. He often included art when he had nothing worthwhile to write, an interesting doorway, a sloping garden path. This time, a wooden staircase stretched into shadows, Jared's clothes-jacket, shirt, shoes, pants, underwear-lying on the steps in descending order. Above it ran the question, "Meet you up top?"

He bit his lip and ran a finger over the steering wheel. Here would be the collarbone, there, on the seat, would be the swell of his thigh, at first tracing the man in the letter with his pencil and then secretly with his hands. But he soon shied away, giving his friend a respectful distance, and turned to thoughts of Jensen instead.

He tried to keep it real. They'd have coffee at the gas station and find they'd read the same books, maybe later meet on the weekends for a movie or beers on the porch, not really saying much, just content to have someone around. But his imagination went further, they'd drive back in a blizzard and have to pull off into a field where Jensen would make a pass at him. It could happen. Probably not, but there's no harm in daydreams, and better to objectify a pretty stranger than cheapen the idea of someone he really cared about.

He glanced in the rearview mirror. A wolf stalked nearby, but otherwise he was alone. Five minutes was all he needed, surely it was better to get this out of the way rather than thinking about it the rest of the night. The backseat was warm and worn smooth from previous owners, and he lay down with one hand balanced on the window as though it were a headboard and the car was a four poster bed. He thought about a hundred different ways Jensen might be convinced to fall into bed with him, always circling back to a hesitant version of the man, shy, closeted, never been kissed. In need of instruction.

He pulled up his shirt right before he came, and dozed in the jizzfog for a few minutes before hunting his pockets for napkins. Sliding back into the driver's seat, his headlights caught the wolf on the opposite shore, its' green eyes glued to the water. He backed out slowly, but it paid him no mind, intent on some prey far below the surface.

Some wire in the fuel line must have rotted, because his engine stalled when he tried making that last hard right. He sat atop a hill, coasting toward the gas station with one hand on the emergency brake in case an animal darted out, and thankfully stopped beneath the glow of a street lamp. It was 8:34. Smoke poured out the back of the restaurant and he recognized all the cars in the parking lot. Had Jensen walked here?

"What'll you have?"

Jared stared at the menu, a line of hungry truck drivers behind him. "Water for now, I'm waiting for someone."

(Note: If you are reading this aloud, stand over a plate of food for fifteen minutes, then throw it away.)

A plastic cup landed beside his hand and he made his way to the soda fountain in the back, fondling a bag of chips that had been marked down. Maybe Jensen wouldn't mind eating in the car. Maybe they'd skip dinner and Jared could pin him in the backseat. The girl at the register was away and all the costumers were watching satellite wrestling. He pulled the chips toward his coat pocket.

"Hey, sorry, I thought you'd be out front."

Jared shoved the chips back and hitched a smile. Jensen wore a gray jacket with matching gloves and a lot of white silk wrapped around his neck. The faintest color pinked his mouth, so unlike other mens', like a rose dropped into snow, and Jared tried not to stare. "I didn't know what you might want to eat, the sandwiches are pretty good here-"

But Jensen cut him off. "If someone had to die, tonight, who would it be?"

Jared said nothing. Did he hear right? For a moment Jensen was so still that he might have been a prop. Any second now the walls would pull apart and a camera crew would reveal itself, that this was all an act. But the meat sizzled and the TV blared in the background, miles away, and if he found Jensen's question shocking he didn't show it. "What's it for?"

Jensen glanced at the nazarlik on Jared's coat, then at the pay phone out front. "Call them. Your car needs a jump."

"How do you know that?"

Jensen turned back. "Did you do as I asked earlier?"

Jared searched his memory of their brief conversation in the library. Then, on an impulse, he held up his hand, the one with spray paint on his thumb, and asked, "Do I know you?"

Jensen smiled impishly and turned on his heel for Jared to follow. Into the dark, where the bodies go. Jared could have stayed, could have gone back in his car and driven home and started looking at rental listings in New Jersey, but his curiosity far, far outweighed his fear, and it pulled his feet forward like an unholy riptide.

He rested his hand on the receiver, stalling, but he knew who to call. Did that make him a murderer? What was worse, one man's death or the thousand million horrors inflicted by cable news every day? He called Daryl and begged him to come down, half hoping he wouldn't.

"He's on his way," said Jared, hanging up, "Are you going to...do it outside?"

Jensen did not answer. He studied a woman's footprint and buried it under the snow with his shoe. "We should move the car further down."

(Note: If you are reading this aloud, take a knife and cut the person sitting next to you. They had it coming.)

Jared figured he had at least an hour to talk Jensen out of his plan, but headlights swung around the corner soon after he placed the call, and Jensen brought a cinderblock down on Daryl's head before he was all the way out the driver's side door. Together they levered the body into Jared's trunk while Jensen stuck a note reading BRAKES OUT, WAITING FOR A TOW on the dashboard inside.

Jensen's street was the last turn before the state line, forty miles north. Had he been sleeping in the library? All the other houses were occupied, Christmas trees in the windows,green bins neatly lined up on the curb for trash pick-up. Jensen pushed a key in the front lock and kept his hand there, like a teenager trying to decide if she should invite her date inside or not.

"You're not gonna tell anyone about this, right?"

Jared swallowed. "Of course not."

"You promise?"

The question charged between them, as if the wrong answer might ignite the air. "I promise."

He seemed satisfied with this and turned the lock. The door opened on a set of carpeted stairs, and, beyond that, a darkened hallway with a strip of light at the end. Jared took a long look at the stars as if it were his last, then hooked his arms under Daryl and dragged him indoors.

They dropped him in an unfinished room with bars on the window, and Jared was about to leave when Jensen called out to him."You haven't seen the rest of the house."

Jared turned. Jensen stood at the top of the stairs, face lost in shadow save for the glint of his steel-rimmed glasses. "You killed all those people?"

"No. I didn't kill them."

"Where are they?"

Jensen tapped the banister and then moved out of sight. Jared listened to Daryl struggle for several seconds, tried forming the report he'd give the police, but his promise to Jensen sealed his lips and the words turned to sand. And so what if he got his big story? Those drifters would still be dead, death by friendlessness, death by chance, death by his cowardice if he didn't act. He touched the gun inside his coat and raced up the stairs.

Houses take on the personalities of their masters, and this one was no less adept at misdirection. When Jared stepped into the private library, the first thing that struck him was, not that someone was about to die in there, but that anyone could own so many books. Shelves climbed past the firelight, possibly higher than he could have seen with a lantern, each book hardbound and ordered by author. Jensen sat in one of two leather armchairs, on a good rug with a tasteful arrangement of art that neither crowded the walls nor detracted from the impressive book collection. It spoke only of comfort and welcome.

Daryl lay handcuffed on the floor, and when he squealed Jensen peered down as if at the underside of a beetle, and pressed Daryl's face into the carpet with his shoe.

"Do me a favor, see that blue volume where I'm pointing?"

Jared followed his hand, to an old collection of poetry. He plucked it from the shelf.

"Turn to a page. Any page you like. Read to me."  
Jared turned to the end and read a few lines. Compared birds to stars and stars to distant women. Daryl's chest caved in and out, eyes pleading on some silent frequency, but there was a wide gulf between them now and Jared could not cross it.

"Good. Read another for me."

The next one was a spy novel, the front jacket torn away and spotted with mold. Jared stopped mid-sentence when he saw the next page was missing, but Jensen waved this away and requested another book.

"What is this for?"

For explanation, Jensen took the third book from him, adjusted his glasses, and began to read the tragic tale of two friends who'd shot each other in a duel. He had a deep, rolling voice that Jared recognized, though he couldn't place where.

(Note: If you're reading this aloud, use the voice you hear when reading a love letter to yourself. There's only one.)

"I don't get it."

"Don't you see?" said Jensen, pointing at the first poem, "How the poet longs for flight. The way a bird moves. How the air would sting him. And here, in the novel, the night behind the city like a great mouth. But, ah here, in that tender friendship between two men, you find the core of all their heroes."

"Find what?"

Jensen looked up. "Me," he said, the whole room warping in the concave reflection of his glasses, "And, more importantly, you."

Jared looked at the book in his hands and then searched the shelves, but searching for what? The pattern Jensen so desperately needed him to believe in? That decades of dimestore literature had shaped themselves to Jensen's likeness, had pointed to this moment, this house, this standoff over an ex-junkie bleeding on the rug?

Jared pulled out the gun. He may as well have aimed a finger at Jensen for all the good it did him. "Tell me where you put the others."

Jensen opened his hand, as if to say 'elsewhere'. "They're not far."

Jared listened hard, and for a moment the walls seemed to bend toward him, the books he couldn't see leaning in from their darkened parapet, whispering about him.

Jensen stood up and the room contracted, pulling them together. "Your letters meant a lot to me. I read them over and over until I saw you everywhere, in the books, in the stones, in the language of birds."

He was very close, his breath hot on Jared's mouth. "Right away I knew what our home would look like. But it takes, oh, buckets of people to make a proper house."

The gun was heavy, too heavy for him to bear. Jensen pushed it down, his fingers locked on Jared's wrist.

"You can't keep them prisoner." said Jared.

"It's not a prison. It's an escape."

Jensen's glasses fall to the carpet. Jared didn't remember pinning him to the bookshelf, big brown hands balled up in his shirt and teeth bared like a startled cat, but suddenly his knee pressed against Jensen's leg, warm, suggestive, and all the meanness dropped out of him when Jensen asked:

"Do you want to leave?"

It was a fair question. Jared thought of the letters, so recently cherished and now as useless to him as a pencil sketch of water to a dying man, and the hunger he had not recognized until now gnawed at him.

A black fire burned in the back of Jensen's eyes, like he's come from the Devil. "What do you want?"

Jared had not meant to say it, afraid mere words would cheapen his love, but he leaned in to Jensen's ear and told him, told him everything he meant to give to him, the words smearing on Jensen's skin as Jared breathed hot into his throat and his hands found their way around Jensen's waist, pulling their hips together until they were nearly standing on each other. Jensen closed his eyes, letting his head fall against the books.

"You don't see it. I didn't at first. But you will," said Jensen, "Let me show you."

They joined hands, the gun on the floor. Jared found he trusted him and who wouldn't? He smelled like new paper and his eyes were a brilliant green that looked nowhere but at him.

Soon Daryl was ductaped to a folding chair with Jensen beside him on one knee, fingers forcing open his eyelids. He spoke with the caution of one handling a poisonous snake. "It's in the eye. That's where the power comes from. You can't bite down, you can't cut it out, you have to do it quickly or it won't work."

Daryl pleaded, but what could Jared do? Bullets wouldn't stop Jensen and anyone who tried would be ground beneath his chariot wheels. Jared sat by the fire, forcing himself to watch, not making a break for it until Jensen tilted Daryl's face in both hands and pressed his mouth to one eye socket as if to kiss him.

The highway was mercifully free of traffic as Jared sped toward his house, tears scrolling down his cheeks. He drove for what seemed like hours, but the town wasn't there. He doubled back and tried to get his bearings, but the town wasn't there. The sun was a soft-boiled egg forever resting on the lip of the horizon, and as the trees turned into the missing drifters and his car became a dying horse, he knew it would always be twilight, would always be magic hour.

The horse collapsed at the foot of a great manor, strewn with the same childish flowers Jared had painted only hours before. Pulling out his grandmother's gun he pressed the muzzle to the creature's head, and when several minutes passed and he still couldn't do it, he felt Jensen's hand trail along his arm and take aim for him.

"Where are we?"

Jensen ushered him inside and closed the door behind them, forever.

"We're in a book."


	2. Chapter 2

"May I take your coat?"

Jared caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. His clothes had changed, his usual choice but better kept, and his face had lost all the puppy fat. In fact his whole body had lengthened, and when he slid off his coat he noticed Jensen was taller and wore a handmade suit that no librarian had a right to wear.

A redhead in a filmy black something appeared by Jared's arm. "There you are sweetie. I'll fix you a drink, what'll you have?"

"Um..." said Jared, her eyebrows lifting at his reticence. Hadn't she been one of the first to go missing? When had his voice deepened? "I'll have the Courvousier."

She looked him up and down approvingly, then shot a half-smile toward Jensen. "Someone's got taste."

Glasses clinked in the next room, a lot of them judging by the laughter, and Jensen gave her hand a playful squeeze. She looked solid enough. Was she a construct like the rest of the house? "We'll be by Dee, give us a minute."

Jared caught fragments of conversation through the wallpaper, details about his investigation too specific to be coincidence, while upstairs someone was a leading a chorus on the piano. He watched the girl turn and dematerialize into the shadows.

While Jensen hung their coats, Jared clasped his hands and took in the room. The Christmas tree arranged just so. The smell of butter cookies. The bowl of oranges on the coffee table, how he'd dreamed of living somewhere with such a bowl of oranges. He stared at his hands, which had already grown more defined, closer to what Jensen imagined him to look like. Grandmother's nazarlik was pinned in the button hole, the one thing that hadn't changed, and he tucked it out of sight right as Jensen returned.

Jensen cleaned his glasses. Whatever magic held the House together had heightened his natural beauty, so much so that Jared had to look away. "You have questions, Jared?"

Jared wiped the sweat from his inside his collar and checked to see if he'd imagined that too. "Is this real?"

Jensen took Jared's hand. "I'm real. You're real."

Jared closed his eyes, but did not pull away. "Why did you bring me here?"

"You led us here. This is your story," said Jensen, pointing down the hall, "Take my arm, I'll make introductions."

But Jared knew already everyone in that party. Even laughing and flush with champagne, the drifters looked the same as the day they went missing, happy even, perhaps would now live an ageless existence in this place. Did they know which book they were in? And if Jared's fate were predetermined, what would he, the character, be expected to do?

"What is this?"

"This..." said Jensen, his mouth to Jared's ear, "Is the party where you find the killer."

Jared turned his head slowly.

"At first at least," Jensen amended, pointing out a slim blonde across the room, "You befriend a state attorney connected to one of the victims. A well-meaning woman with poor choice in friends. But it's bigger than you think. A corrupt legal system. Money laundering. A conspiracy planned by the permanent government in order to subdue the elected government. And then the national spotlight when you crack the whole thing open at a White House press conference."

He wound his arm through Jared's, eyes alight. "It's a great story, one worth living."

Jared gaped at this version of himself. "You did all this?"

Jensen moved even closer, fingers pressed into Jared's wrist. "You helped. All those drawings you sent me built this place, made this possible. The details..." he said, gesturing in the blonde's direction, "Were scribbled in the margins."

"But I've just met you."

Jensen gave him a long searching look, his words so soft that Jared thought them more than heard them. "We would always meet some day. Didn't you ever sit alone at a bar, or in the back of a used bookstore, or in a playground with an empty swing beside you, waiting for me to appear?"

Jared had no answer, and when his eyes welled he let Jensen cup his chin. "You have a great life ahead of you," he said, tipping Jared's face toward his, "And I want to be here when that happens."

Jared swallowed. "Before, you'd said all the books were about us. So who are you, the hero...or the monster?"

Jensen dropped his hand and reached for a champagne glass. "I'm your best friend."

The House was amazing, Jared had to admit, like someone had shook out his head and repainted the inside with better colors, but it couldn't all be him. Jensen sat down at the piano to sing, a cloying ballad that Jared used to hate but now found endearing. The party-goers watched, the John Does from his files now cast as artists or investors, a better class of drifter. As he thought this, he realized Jensen was narrating it in his head, but he didn't mind. Like the song, everything sounded better in Jensen's voice.

Jensen's true self was in here somewhere. How many layers would Jared have to peel back-anonymous pen pal, librarian, sorcerer-until he found the core of Jensen? He slipped through the crush of perfumed bodies toward the back, toward the other rooms.

A waiter appeared with his drink. "Courvousier?"

"I want to see the rest of the house."

The waiter blinked, as if that weren't in the script. "But the party hasn't ended, sir."

He glanced over his shoulder. Jensen rose from the piano bench and gently peeled some beautiful women off his arm, just long enough for him to scan the room and find Jared gone.

"Jared?"

Jared held his breath, flattened inside a closet door.

"Jared, where are you?"

He waited for Jensen's footsteps to fade, the question "Where are you?" echoing down the spiraling stairs as Jensen disappeared toward the roof. Exiting and opening the first door he came upon, he walked along push red carpeting that snaked around corners and stopped at a hotel lobby. No one sat at the front desk. No one answered the phone when he dialed zero. But there was an elevator, which meant the other captive drifters might be somewhere close by.

The elevator in the Other House had two sets of buttons. The ones on the left depicted chapters in Jared and Jensen's time together (Mezzanine: Once Upon a Time, 2: Love at First Sight, 3: An Unlikely Hero, etc.) whereas the ones on the right...were blank. These were the underground floors, and while Jensen had entitled well over twenty floors above ground, the blanks numbered to -178. Jared pressed the last button.

Ten minutes later the doors opened on the interior of a ranch style house, the living room furnished in the 1980's style and overlooking a street with similarly old model cars. No one was in the other rooms. School photos of Jensen as a child lined the wall. An unlabeled VHS tape sat on top of the television, and he popped it in the player.

A few seconds of ads segued into a re-run of "Little House on the Prairie", the one where Papa Ingalls monologues on the virtue of a good woman. A barn could be seen in the distance, from which a shadow stood behind a curtained window. Papa's monologue started out well enough, except that his words began to wander halfway through the scene, the children continuing to smile as he leaned on a shovel and mixed homespun wisdom with descriptions of murder factories in Oklahoma.

Jared rewound the tape, sure he'd heard it wrong. But when he replayed it the monologue was different, far too obscene for television, Michael Landon dropping f-bombs in a tutorial on proper crucifixion as the sky behind him breathed in and out like a living organism. The camera panned left. Several of the children lay dead. The shadow in the window was gone.

Jared rewound it a third time. The background was filled with graves. Papa Ingalls surveyed the empty field and said, " As the years pass, I am coming more and more to see the face in my dreams. I walk an unlit corridor where my true love's voice is continually moving away from me, weeping. He is weeping. I am weeping. Inconsolable. I don't want to die alone."

Laughtrack.

"They are the things that fill our lives with kerosene and our hearts with broken glass. The only good wife is a headless wife. You don't know how long I ached for him, for strong arms around me. A moment of silence for the school shooter in Montreal."

Laughtrack. The shadowy figure now stood behind Papa Ingalls.

"Let's be thankful. The sweat on your brow and your labor completed. Human eyes are a marvel, no one really understands them. They wriggle in my stomach like goldfish. I'm so cold. I've been alone for so long, and when you look under my skin it looks like I'm covered in marinara sauce."

Laughtrack, then static.

Jared rewound it a final time. When he replayed it, Michael Landon was gone, the farm was gone, the grave markers were overgrown with weeds. The shadow stood in the center, facing the camera, a closed caption appearing below it.

THERE YOU ARE.

Jared wheeled away, jabbing the UP button and screaming in the corner of the elevator carriage all the way back to the hotel lobby.

He took a moment, holding in air and then breathing out his nose. The lobby button glowed, and he pressed the 'Close Door' button. He couldn't go back to the party. Then the solution came to him.

He jammed number 25 on the left side panel and rode all the way to the top.

* * *

Jared and Jensen sat in flowery armchairs set against a red curtain with coffee mugs in their hands. Jared smiled into the camera. "Good morning to our audience at home, we have a special guest today."

"What are you doing?" Jensen hissed.

Jared covered his microphone. "I skipped to the end of the book."

"There's no morning news show in the story."

"There is in mine."

Jensen glanced at the camera and the live audience of drifter/characters. He hated being stared at.

"Glad you made it here safely, Mister Ackles. You can't be too careful, what with there being a serial killer on the loose."

The audience laughed, a slight delay causing an echo on the video feed monitor nearest him.

"I think if the American public had one question for you, it's..."

What? Is there an America to go back to? Are we trapped in a pocket universe? Do we still have bodies? How do you run a black magic dictatorship on the bones of hobos and still manage to stay sexy trim? Jared cleared his throat.

"...will you come live in my house?"

Jensen remained still, but something loosened behind his steely gaze. Jared continued. "I know I didn't give the best impression of it in the letters, but you can't do better than Shaker architecture, thing's built like a bunker."

"I gathered as much from your illustrations."

"You don't like it?"

"It's not your house, it's the people around it. They're trying to preserve the old ideas of happiness, lives without direction."

Jared gestured to the audience. "And you're leading them to happiness."

"You understand what it is to lead, Jared. You write something and hundreds of people read it, base their future decisions on your account of events that have happened thousands of miles away."

"But swaying people to my opinion doesn't do away with their free will."

"I didn't do away with free will. That would be impossible. I only gave them a structure to work inside. Shakespeare had his sonnet form, Renoir had his canvas, and I have a house."

The audience laughed, and a bubble of panic rose in Jared as he realized the flaw in his brilliant plan. In an effort to connect to the drifters, Jared had reverted to his jeans and flannel, whereas Jensen wore his usual uniform of tie, glasses, sweater vest beneath a tweed jacket, and elbow patches. The Intelligentsia. The more Jensen talked, the more he came across as the amiable voice of reason, whereas Jared was the ignorant cracker trying to beat Jensen's chess game with a bag of marbles.

"Not all of us are directionless, Mister Ackles."

"Yes, but you will not succeed. You mean well and with enough hard work you might attain some small fraction of the recognition you feel is owed you, but eventually you'll fall behind and someone will take your place," said Jensen, a dark glitter in his eyes, "Someone like Daryl?"

Jared tongued the back of his teeth, though Jensen could tell he'd scored a hit. "Why drifters?"

"They never got a chance to play a role in life. I've given them one."

"The county coroner found a John Doe in the middle of a frozen lake."

"Yes. His role had ended."

"Why did he have to die?"

"He believed in the old ideas of happiness."

"And?"

"And you can't change people's minds, Jared."

"He died like an animal."

Jensen polished his glasses. "I don't enjoy violence. But I must be expected to defend myself against outside forces."

Jared imagined Captain One Eye starting an insurrection from within the House, rallying the masses to tear the place down to stud. He bit his lip and focused on the audience in the video feed. The delay wasn't much, but it meant two precious seconds where Jensen didn't have direct control over the future.

"That suggests your House runs on the support, in this case passive support, of those dwelling here," said Jared, and though the live audience hadn't moved, the people in the video feed looking around in confusion as they suddenly realized where they were, "What happens should they become self-aware?"

Jensen smiled, and Jared was about to ask the next question when he heard something behind him, a mouse or a squeaky shoe. Or a wet meat twist. He looked behind his chair and found only extension cables. The exit sign glowed red. The live audience remained seated, the cameras stood in position, there was no sign of electronic interference.

But the video feed of the audience turned to static for a few seconds, and when it came back on the people in the bleachers were...changed.

"I wouldn't recommend that, Jared."

The live audience laughed, though perhaps one or two began to grow pale. Meanwhile, the video feed had switched to closed captions, the picture going to static again and coming back to a riot, the people inside clawing at the camera to get out.

"Make them stop. Make them stop."

Static. Four old men in the live audience crumpled in their suits. According to the timestamp, days had passed inside the feed. They'd begun eating the weak.

Jared lept from his chair and ripped out the power cord. "Stop!"

He watched the screen, black save for the timestamp. One week. Four weeks. Six months.

"I wouldn't look, Jared."

Jared plugged the power back in. Shadows sat in the bleachers. Burning garbage was strewn across the stage. A man crouched just out of frame, digging at something with his nails. He lifted his red hands in supplication. A closed captain appeared below him as he walked toward the camera.

TAKE THIS TRIBUTE.

He moved closer, closer, until he bumped the camera and the screen tilted ninety degrees to reveal another man on the floor, his mouth an O, rib cage spread open like a flower. The ritual priest, hoping to appease whatever angry god had trapped him in the video feed, peered into the camera. His lips moved soundlessly.

I SEE YOU.

Then the feed went to static, and the audience was restored to the current time. Jensen made an off-color joke and the women hooted. They seemed unaware of the horrors that had transpired.

Jensen turned his smile on Jared. A note of warning in his square white teeth. "That's what you get for skipping to the end of the book."

* * *

Jared stared at his feet, trying to recall which chapter lay directly below him. The wedding chapel? The courthouse? No, the biker bar. His pen was still in his pocket. Tracing a square on the floor with two lines intersecting the middle, he shoved his elbow through the makeshift window and fell onto a pool table in a shower of broken glass.

The two men playing pool backed away. "What the hell man?"

Jared shook glass out of his hair, holding a bruised shoulder in one hand. "Which way's the elevator?"

"There ain't no elevator," said one of the players, "Thing's been busted for ages."

Jared turned and read the OUT OF ORDER sign taped to the brass doors. Prying them open with his fingertips, he got them six inches apart before an icy wind lept up and stung his face, the shaft empty and extending forever down into the earth.

Jared jammed his leg into the door, glancing at the hole in the ceiling right as Jensen peered down and then vanished. "Hurry up and let's get outside."

But they weren't leaving. Jared pointed at the nearest biker. "I know you. From the police reports. Went to jail for grand theft auto. And you," he said to a passing waitress, "Sold unmarked guns out of a nail salon. Your family's been looking for you."

Jared grabbed the waitress's arm, but she was stronger than she looked and backhanded him. She could have gone further, but something moved inside the elevator shaft and she rushed to the bar and busied herself with receipts.

Jared touched his cheek and winced. "This isn't real. That's not alcohol, that's not a pool game, this is all puppet theater."

The sound grew, framed photographs shivering on the wall and dropping to the floor. Everyone resumed their appointed tasks, talking over his shouts.

"How long can you sons of bitches take orders from a man in a sweater?!"

A splintering noise rose up from the shadows and wrapped around his waist. The rope was thin, no more than the hairsbreadth of paint on concrete, but they parted the two elevator doors like a banana peel and lifted him bodily off the floor. Somewhere below, Jensen called his name, and Jared watched the light fade into a distant star as a thick vine of painted roses pulled him hurtling down the elevator shaft.

* * *

Jensen sat in his favorite chair by a brick oven that took up the entire wall, only looking up from his reading when Jared said something. Jensen folded the letter and set it aside.

"I'm sorry, can you repeat that?"

Jared dangled from the ceiling, vines around his ankles and biceps, his fevered face inches from Jensen's. The rose's perfume put everything into soft focus, and when he tried replying all he could manage was vowels.

"Am I dead?"

"No."

"Then where do you go if you die in a book?"

Jared's voice shook, his fanciful question at odds with the heavy, stern furnishings of Jensen's quarters. Jensen plucked the pen from Jared's pocket, cast it into the oven, then sat far back in his chair until his glasses were two disks of dancing flame.

"This isn't death, Jared, this is your...reeducation."

A knock at the door, and Dee the redhead came in rolling a tray. "Excuse me, there we go." she said, dusting fingerprints from a set of silver drawers on the tray, blowing a stray hair that had caught in her lipstick and letting it land on her plump cheek. A towel hung over her arm, and she lay this on the floor beneath Jared as though he were about to step out of the shower.

A crowd formed at the door. "Move, I want to see." "Is he awake yet?" "Shut up, I can't hear what he said."

Other women milled in and out, humming to themselves as they rolled up carpets, stacked chairs, and, after some discussion, taped brown paper over the paintings. Mops and gallon containers of cleaning fluid were parked in the hallway just outside the bedroom door, and more towels were rolled along either side of Jared to form a sort of channel to a drain in the floor.

Opening the first drawer, two blondes uncorked a vial of ink and he twisted in vain as they traced around his eyes with a paintbrush. What else did Jensen keep in those drawers? Blood-warm and half-sentient, the ink wormed inside his clothes, forming words as the women portioned out his body until he resembled a butcher's diagram. Jensen did not look up from his reading.

"What do the words mean, Jensen?"

Jared had scarcely finished speaking when the women broke into a flurry of reassurances, one voice fading into another.

"Just wait a while longer...do as he asks...a little pruning is all...give him five minutes and then you can stop..."

But Jensen cleared his throat and Jared's would-be protectors removed themselves, straightening the fire and little items on the tray as though they did this every day.

"I meant what I said back there," said Jared, drunk on the roses, thoughts like light pushing through dirty water, "Come with me. We'll walk out the way we...came."

He followed Dee as she tossed open curtains to paper over the pane glass, and Jared caught a glimpse of the backyard. The edge of it. Stopping fifty feet from the window and dropping into a ravine so vast he could see neither the bottom nor the other side, as if Jensen's house were perched atop a stalactite stretching all the way to the earth's core. Then the paper rolled down and he no longer saw own reflection.

One of the onlookers clicked his teeth. "Look at him shake. Dee, tell him, you can tell it best."

Dee stood by Jared's ear to explain. Her body made him ache this close up, curves wrapped in a red sweater with no bra and a sprig of holly behind her ear. Was it still Christmas somewhere? "It's nothing," she said, little white teeth showing through her lips, "It's like... boiling the ink out of an old book so can you write it over again."

She spoke from experience. "What about the life you have back home?"

But he looked at Jensen, who pressed his lips to the back of Dee's hand before showing her the door, and knew the answer. Knew the daily refrain of eating breakfast in a cold kitchen to drive to a job he couldn't afford to live in fear of bosses half his size, too scared to approach girls at the bar and terrified to proposition any of the local men. Real life was a punk game. Who wouldn't trade all that away?

Everyone filed out, leaving the two men alone. Jensen picked up one of the two letters from the side table, and began to read aloud.

"'Some kids shot a hole in the building next door. I painted a rose around the hole and now I get hard every time I think about it."

He held up a sketch of the aforementioned roses. Jared blushed, his fantasies somehow more obscene in Jensen's voice. "You weren't supposed to know that."

Jensen read on. "'Sometimes I read the obituaries and wonder if you're dead, and that if I jerked off on your grave you'd rise up and ride me in your coffin until my heart stopped.'"

He set aside a pencil sketch, Jared's sketch, of the cemetery near Jared's house, letting his fingers linger affectionately on the paper.

Jared began to speak, but Jensen held up his finger. "This is my favorite. 'I had that dream again, where you and I are made of chocolate, and we rut ourselves into a melted mess until we explode across the walls like the', this is great, ' like the Jackson Pollock of fucks."

Jensen looked up, eyebrows raised to see if he ought to continue. It was a long list.

"Where did you get that?"

Jensen tilted his head back, swinging his glasses around in one hand. "You wrote it. Or you would have."

Jared's mouth flapped, a protest lodged in his throat. "I didn't want to scare you."

He'd barely gotten the words out and Jensen was up from his chair, across the room, taking Jared's face in his hands. He ran his fingers through Jared's hair, tugging him close, their mouths just brushing.

"The mind you have, do you even know what you do to me?"

He traced the hollow of Jared's throat, the feline curve of his cheek. "The months I waited, with only your drawings to go on, imagining what you looked like and then to finding out you're more beautiful than anything I deserve?"

Reacting to his touch, the words slid across Jared, caressing his whole body in light hot licks, and his knees gave out.

"What do the words mean?"

Jensen's green eyes glittered, his face burning with unspoken emotion. "You're a love letter."

Jared started, but Jensen held him close, a finger on Jared's lips. "Sshhh, let it happen."

Jared weakened, panting in Jensen's rough embrace as words like 'wind' and 'bicycle' and 'birthday cake', mortal words from Outside, were drawn out of him, Jensen kissing him over and over until he grew pliant. He thought of Captain One Eye, fighting for breath and striking at nothing right up to the end, but then Jensen parted his lips and kissed that away too, sucking all the taste out of him.

Jensen broke off, smoothing Jared's hair away from his face. "How do you feel now?"

What could Jared say? Strength, hope, ferocity, he did not know these strangers, but they flowed through him now and he did little to resist.

Jared lunged at him and caught his lip between his teeth, fear replaced with a sudden hunger for love. "Kiss me."

Jensen's mouth hovered over his, running a hand over Jared's chest, his narrow waist, appreciatively as an owner would his prize stallion. "Is that all you want?"

When the ink had faded, or maybe settled into his bones, Jared swayed from the vines like a marionette with Jensen unbuckling his belt and pushing his jeans down with his foot. "I want you in my arms."

Jensen searched his eyes. "No, no, that's not it. Where's the anger? Where's the spark? Where is that perverse brilliance that kept me up at night?"

Jensen walked back to the tray, fiddling with various instruments. "You can do better than that."

Some small voice in the back of his head told Jared to run, to back out while he still could. "I'll do anything you want."

Jensen ignored this. "I find I get my best ideas when I'm half-asleep. When I'm... " He stopped polishing a straight razor and searched for the phrase, "...bone-weary. You're the same way."

Jared stood naked by the brick oven, waves of heat pumping out until sweat dripped out of his hair into his open mouth. A rose sniffed the air around his cock, curious. Jensen replaced the razor on the tray. "Tell me about the roses."

Jensen breathed by his ear, invading his space. Jared stammered, not wanting to betray all of his secrets. "They...um, they, I mean I always dreamed you had a mouth like a rose. Like in a fairy tale. And then I thought, what if the rose dreamed of me?"

Jared shivered this close to Jensen, starved for touch. Jensen smiled. "That sounds like me. The rose I mean. Soft all over with a spike in the middle."

Jensen took the curious rosebud, and ripe and warm inside, and pushed it against Jared's cock. "Was it thirsty?"

Jared strained as the rosebud opened around him, swallowing an inch or two, sucking him like a hard candy. Jensen kept his hand on the small of Jared's back to steady him, eager for any little noise Jared might make. The slightest touch, running a finger along the dip of Jared's back, and Jared's cock grew thick inside the flower.

He watched Jensen return to the silver drawers. "I'm not going to last long like this."

"Oh I'm not letting you finish _now_," said Jensen, pulling on a pair of black leather gloves, "It's Christmas."

The roses clung to Jared, wrapping around the base of his cock, around his eyes in a leafy blindfold, as Jensen opened the bottom drawer.

"And tonight," said Jensen, lifting out a riding crop, "We're gonna do every thing on that list."

Jared felt Jensen's hand over his mouth a second before the first snap stung his ass, before he involuntarily thrust into the rosebud. He moaned into Jensen's hand, biting down on his finger, but all he got for it was another snap and Jensen's flat hiss.

"I didn't say you could be still. Move. Your hips."

Jared cried out with every snap of the riding crop, and his sobs gave him relief, his cock an aching misery between his legs as the rose threatened to bring him close, milking his cockhead but never going deeper, the vines crushing the base whenever he got too close. He thought he was in Hell. He thought he could never ask for a better tormentor than the green-eyed devil whipping his back, his ass, his legs, goading him into fucking the rose with a kind of manic glee.

"You want it harder?"

Jared hesitated, turned blindly to the sound of Jensen's voice, heard the genuine need for permission beneath the unforgiving, imperial tone he'd used since the moment they'd entered the house. There was respect. Safety.

"Harder."

* * *

Dee was arranging bouquets of candy canes when the screaming began. She smiled faintly and placed one on the piano, wondering if Jensen needed a hand.

One of the women flipped through a songbook. "What should we sing next?"

Another scream. Dee's fingers flew over the piano keys, drowning it out. "How about _I'll Be Home for Christmas?_ Okay ladies, a one and a two and a..."

* * *

Jared hung in his restraints, back striped red, cock hanging off him like a crime scene. Jensen lifted his chin with one finger and kissed his forehead, eyes full of tender concern. "Had enough?"

Jared's knees ached from the hardwood floor, but he rose to his feet. His clothes, his shirt with the nazarlik pinned to the sleeve, rested nearby. "Release me."

"What are you going to do?"

Jared told him, and when a blank book on the table heard the answer it burst into flame. Without breaking the stare, Jensen snapped his fingers and the vines coiled away into the shadows. His smiled, but his eyes moved the slightest fraction in apprehension.

"Go ahead," he said, winding his arms around Jared, "I won't stop you."

Jared walked them backwards, mouths open against each other, sweeping the table clear with one powerful stroke before spinning around and dropping Jensen on his back. Snow struck the windows, the air chill, but Jared is six and half feet of wet muscle as he climbed into Jensen's arms, mouths sealed, his fingers questing blindly for the clasp on Jensen's belt, impatiently unbuttoning Jensen's shirt to feel hot skin against his.

Dropping clothes on the floor, he cupped his hands atop Jensen's knees, fingers sliding inside his bare legs, trembling with inexperience. Just two young men about to give themselves to each other, Jensen's head tilted back and looking up through his eyelashes, mouth kiss-swollen, cock in his fist against his hard belly like he's very close but wants to hold it until Jared's inside of him.

Jared wanted to last as well, and shaping a hand behind Jensen's neck he kissed him slow and deep, moaning into his mouth as he slid his cock against Jensen's thigh and came at once, jizz sliding into the crack of his ass and pooling on the table.

Jensen watches all this impatiently, lips parted, little pink tongue showing against his teeth. "Hurry up."

Something stopped Jared for a moment, as if this were final, as if he were about to eat stolen fruit in the land of the dead. But then Jensen asked him something else, if he's ever had a virgin come grinding hard on his cock, to which Jared said no.

"You will."

Fear is a line and Jared had stepped over it. One finger would be enough, but Jensen asked for more. Two fingers stretch to where it's bearable, but Jensen asked for more, a wild light in his eyes. Jensen's cock leaked a medallion on his belly, red, aching, the lightest touch setting him off. Jared never had anyone so easy in his life.

What had those first letters to Jensen been like? Jared had never confessed his dirty inclinations before tonight, but surely Jensen was no different than he, waiting until the house was quiet, switching off the bedroom light, lying naked and spread out in the moonlight as he pumped his pretty young cock and imagined Jared holding him down like this.

"Hurry, I want to finish with you," gasped Jensen, breaking their kiss to breath into Jared's mouth, "Just tell me when, I can hold back."

Jared pressed the head of his cock to his ass, half hoping Jensen won't be able to take him, them watched as he opened the ring of his virgin ass and Jensen's nails marked his forearms as Jared slowly sank inside him, bottoming out until Jensen was stretched tight around the base of his cock.

"Don't stop. Don't stop. I'm not as innocent as I look." Jensen whispered, as Jared pressed his forehead to his, face twisted in cockbound agony.

"I didn't mean it earlier. I don't wanna leave you." said Jared, barely mouthing the words, all the air gone out of him.

They are a tangle of limbs, Jared's wide hands in the hollows of Jensen's knees, back gleaming, his bangs sweaty ringlets against the side of his face, utterly lost in Jensen's body. Hips slapping the table, leaving greasy bodyprints on the polished wood, obscene and beautiful at the same time. Jensen asking that question, Jared answering how he'd pictured doing this to him a thousand different ways, Jared pouring sin in his ear as he pounded away at his innocence.

"I want you to do it," Jensen whispered, closing Jared's hand around his cock to claim, "Fuck me. Do it hard, do it fast. And afterwards I will tie you to the bed and burn your clothes and and do all the hundred other things you were too scared to write down and ask me for. But right now fuck me or I swear I will fucking _end_ you."

The look on Jensen's face was enough. Jared was so deep inside him he's forgotten how to breathe, and with a few hard swipes he felt Jensen's cock jump in his hand, sending a thick white rope across his chest, and even though it took him a bit longer Jensen's strong fingers dug into Jared's hips, forcing him on, table rocking precariously as they crashed into one another.

Jared's shirt lay nearby. Jared's fingers creeping toward the nazurlik still pinned to the sleeve. The pin as long as his hand and hot from long proximity to the fire.

"Come home with me. Leave all this, I don't need a story and neither do you," Jared pleaded one last time, hand closing around the pin, "Aren't I enough?"

But Jared saw his path clearly now. The moment he stepped into Jensen's story, Jensen's was over. Not right away, but in that direction. Jared wasn't the hero, he wasn't the villain, he wasn't true love's kiss. He was The End.

"I love you."

Jared choked on Jensen's name one last time, and struck down.

* * *

Jared came to on the tiles of the gas station floor. The gun had bounced a few feet away. Men were shoveling road salt in the parking lot, black hoods pulled over their heads like buzzards. He steadied himself as they nodded to him, offering to share a cigarette, but that wasn't the kind of fix Jared needed.

He'd left the car running, and though the windshield was cracked and the driver's seat full of broken glass, the wheel turned under his hands and he raced north for the state line.

(Note: If you're reading this aloud...I'm sorry, I forgot what I was going to say.)

Everyone was at church when he pulled into Jensen's driveway. There was no mail in the mailbox. He rang the doorbell and crossed the backyard and pressed his face to the screen porch and before he'd looked through the first window he knew something had changed in his absence. He pulled his car further in and locked it and walked through the unlocked kitchen door and shut it behind him and walked up the stairs.

No one was there. He checked every room. The furniture was gone. Grass grew in the fireplace. A tree had fallen through the roof some time ago, and birds had built nests in the library shelves. A bare mattress stood against one wall of the bedroom. He tried turning on the tap, but no water came, and he went back to the kitchen where he spread out an old newspaper and sat on it and waited and eventually fell asleep.

He awoke to the neighbors returning and walked outside to greet them. The father invited him in though Jared declined, he couldn't take coffee just then, but a plate of breakfast was slid across the table and the children watched him from behind a couch.

"It's the man from the newspaper." said the littlest, as if Jared had come from Mars.

He went back later that afternoon. He checked the rooms again. The family had never once brought up Jensen's name, though their eyes darted across the street and the mother had closed the curtains to keep from seeing the empty house.

(Note: If you're reading this aloud, where are you Jared? I'm so cold.)

He walked into the bedroom and looked out the window. Tried to see what Jensen would have seen, the snow and the sky and the forest a distant haze where shadows of wolves ran in and out of the trees.

Though mice had been at the rest of the house, the mattress was clean on this side, and he wondered about this a long time before he got up the courage to touch it. He pulled it away from the wall and stepped back and let it fall.

(Note: ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... )

In the stillness came a sound like old packing tape as the great wide bloodstain in the center ripped away some of the paint, a sour smell rising up from the dust.

He reached out toward it, then turned and leaned against the door. After a minute he walked down the stairs and went outside and stood beside his car. The street was quiet. The sky had cleared.

Some of the wolves stopped to listen to him, their eyes glinting in the sunlight, before retreating backwards, into the forest, out of the story.

He watched them go and fell to his knees and wept into his hands.

* * *

THE END


End file.
